Standing in motion

I went for a walk up to the Stanford Dish today with some friends in the late evening. The image of this tree, standing there in satisfied solitude struck me not lightly. I wonder, what it would be like to be a tree, to be born and grow standing in one place. To watch the world go by rather than try and move with it. To see the times change rather than change with them. To feel the breeze blowing against you, rather than move with it and not sense its motion at all. To grow in utter silence, with an infinite patience. To be able to just stand and look at the world around you, and grow wise from it. To be able to stand, naked and exposed to nature, to the sun and the rain, the heat and the cold - and to revel in their ethereal touch. Too fast, do we move nowadays, hurrying through our lives with a haste that is surpassed in degree only by its very purposelessness. Speed is what we crave for - direction is not something we care to think about. We prefer a vector incompleteness, prefer being stuck in our single-dimensionality. Not for us, a life of contemplation, of oneness with the world around, of harmony.

What would it feel like, I wonder, to be standing in motion.

"What is this life if, full of care
We have no time to stand and stare"

- Henry Davies, Leisure